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Posts Tagged → receiver

Harrisburg’s new parking scam

Today I parked in a Harrisburg municipal garage. Got my ticket when I entered, and tried to pay when I returned four hours later.

Several poorly written, hand-written notes on lined paper were taped to the payment kiosk. These notes said that the kiosk was now taking only exact payment, that no refunds were being given, that inserting your credit card to pay could result in the permanent loss of your card, and that receipts slips were not printing.

kiosk 2

In other words, you might mistakenly over-pay, because few people carry exact cash for anything, the machine would not give you a receipt for proof that you had overpaid, and you’d get no change back.  What happens if you are in a rush to exit the garage and get on your way to your next destination?  You might just leave a few extra bucks behind to save the time…no doubt that’s part of the purpose.

And we are not talking about nickels and dimes, but dollars only. It cost sixteen bucks to park in the garage for the four hours I was up at the Capitol. That is four dollars an hour, or four quarters for fifteen minutes of parking time (as opposed to one quarter for ten or fifteen minutes like it was until last year). It is a huge amount of money for parking.

And on top of the rip-off parking price, you get zero service, theft of your change due back, and no receipt to prove you did indeed pay.

Harrisburg has some serious challenges, and this parking scam is going to make recovery worse. One of the ways the city is supposed to re-coup its bad debt on the incinerator is lease out the parking garages. Well, here ya go; here is the natural result of that leasing arrangement: All rip-off, no service, outrageous prices, no due process. Really hope the “geniuses” who thought this up are held accountable for this failure.

Wait a minute! The guys who ripped us all off with the incinerator debt never got held accountable, and now we have a whole new set of rip-off guys milking us in new ways. I guess it just doesn’t end, until every taxpayer will have moved from the city and abandoned the place to the crows and the weasels.

Nevin Mindlin Endorses Dan Miller for Mayor of Harrisburg

Yesterday, one-time Independent candidate for Harrisburg City mayor, Nevin Mindlin, endorsed one-time Democratic candidate Dan Miller.

Miller is now running as the Republican-endorsed candidate, because he collected over 300 Republican signatures for that position on the ballot. Just in case.

Miller is a strong threat to the Papenfuse campaign that was literally measuring the draperies and assigning executive positions a day after winning the four-way Democratic primary, assuming they had de facto won the general election.

This race is a rare toss-up. What role the elected mayor has vis-a-vis the state-appointed Harrisburg Receiver (Gen. Lynch) is unclear, but at least it is a bully pulpit. The mayor can call for criminal investigations into the Harrisburg Debt Debacle, or he can not do so. Dan is likely to call for investigations, Papenfuse is disinclined.

With just weeks to go until Election Day, it is hard to know how this will end. One thing for sure I do know, and that is how politics makes for strange bedfellows….

Calling General Lynch to Attention

General William Lynch, Harrisburg’s new receiver tasked with overseeing the further disembowelment of the Pennsylvania Capital, says that his office has no role to play in a criminal investigation.

He says it’s neither his job to conduct one, nor should he be calling for one.

Let me try to piece this together….Lynch is a Republican, like me, but he is trying to actually raise taxes on the handful of remaining Harrisburg City residents who still pay taxes. Despite already having a phenomenally high tax rate, Harrisburg is now supposed to raise them even further. That is according to a Republican leader. Hmmmmm…. I am not happy about that, either from the unsustainability of such a move, nor from the perspective that Republicans traditionally have sought to keep taxes low.

Another oddity is, here sits a law-and-order military man, a general. He’s not a corporal, but a general, the highest rank possible. And he doesn’t want to say that he supports a criminal inquiry into the $350 million debt debacle fueled by insider greed?

Generals are supposed to epitomize (and thereby advocate for) the highest reaches and standards of ethical behavior and conduct. So why is a general now saying that a criminal probe is of no interest to him? Sure, he doesn’t have to pursue it himself, but his predecessor David Unkovic called for one after just a few months on the job. If a crime occurred, as it surely appears to most observers, then why isn’t this leader seeking punishment?

Lynch was recently quoted saying that “There is no money putting people in jail,” which sounds like crime DOES pay in his book. Something is fishy here, folks. A decade of political cover-ups and bipartisan feeding at the piggy trough known as Harrisburg has created a bipartisan web of mutual crime and shared interest in keeping the crime uninvestigated. From what we see, Lynch is playing to that, not bringing the fresh light we needed and expected from the Receiver.